Series Blog Tour with Excerpt + Teasers + Giveaway: Lie to You by J.C. Valentine @AuthorJCV @IndieSagePromo

Lie to You by J.C. Valentine

Series: Forbidden #2

Publication date: July 7th, 2015

Synopsis (according to Goodreads):

I thought he was the one. I thought we were headed someplace great. I didn't know anything.

My mystery man is no longer such a mystery. He's still commanding and headstrong, playing my body and mind like an instrument, but I'm finding there are layers to him I never could have dreamed. What I've learned since that fateful night in his apartment has me reeling. Now, though, the truth has taken a backstage to other, more pressing matters.

While I struggle to make a choice that will determine the direction of my future, lies that I thought had been carefully hidden away are coming to light. My head is such a mess I don't know what's up or down anymore. Will I be able to sort it all out, or will the life I've worked so hard to build come crashing down in a pile of secrets and lies?

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Excerpt

"Where are you running off to, pussycat?" Rebel's smooth-as-ice voice carries down the hall, sending shivers up my spine.

My feet stop moving and I pivot around, glaring at his use of Kota's pet name for me and the rest of the dancers even as I shamelessly eye the shit out of him.

Rebel is like the sun. He's stunningly beautiful and impossible to take my eyes from, no matter how bad I know he is for my health. I stand there for what feels like forever, absorbing the vision he makes.

Arms braced against the doorjamb, he's dressed in a pair of loose fitting blue-gray pajama bottoms with the name of a football team emblazoned up the side of one leg in stark white letters. Somehow, just knowing that he follows the sport makes him seem more human. My gaze continues traveling over him, to his torso on full display, revealing his lightly sun-burnished skin and a dusting of coarse dark hair.

He looks so much like Ransom, it floors me. It has got to be a crime for two men to not only be identical in appearance, but also be so amazing to look at.

"Second thoughts?" Rebel prods, a cocky smile growing on his handsome face. He presses deeper into the doorframe, causing the muscles in his chest and arms to flex. "Afraid the Big, Bad Wolf might bite?"

He's so self-assured, it ticks me off. Lifting my chin in defiance, I stride toward him. "You of all people should know I'm not afraid of a little teeth."

Rebel's gaze is locked on me as I approach. When I reach him, he looks down at me with eyes so black, they appear bottomless. In a voice that's low and full of gravel, he says, "The better you eat you with, pussycat."

About the Author:

J.C. Valentine is the USA Today and International bestselling author of the Night Calls and Wayward Fighters Series and the Forbidden Trilogy. Her vivid imagination and love of words and romance had her penning her own romance stories form an early age, which, despite being poorly edited and written longhand, she forced friends and family members to read. No, she isn't sorry.

Living in the Northwest, she has three amazing children and far too many pets. Among the many hats she wears, J.C. is an entrepreneur. Having graduated with honors, she holds a Bachelor's in English and when she isn't writing, you can find her editing for fellow authors.

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Release Blitz with Teasers: Belleza and the Brute by Jane Matisse @jmatisseauthor @GiveMeBooksBlog

Belleza and the Brute by Jane Matisse

Publication date: April 28th, 2018

Synopsis (according to Goodreads):

The modern remake of a classic tale that twists the fictional into possibility.

When two lost souls are brought together in an unlikely circumstance, it'll take more to scare this feisty beauty away from a domineering beast. A story of love, loss, and learning to accept when life gives you a second chance.

Elena Salazar has taken care of her gambling-addicted brother since her parents' death. When he calls her, late one night asking for help, she's thrown into Tristan Mercier's life and is at his mercy. Unable to pay her brother's debt, a contract is signed: she will live and work for Tristan for six months while her brother is sent to rehab.

Tristan Mercier is scarred, both physically and emotionally. He lost his happily ever after five years earlier in a fire that nearly took his life. He's broken and bitter, but with Elena's arrival, things are changing, and the feelings he thought long buried begin to resurface.

Can this brute open his heart to give his belleza a chance?

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About the Author:

Jane Matisse is a professional introvert who began reading romance novels at the age of thirteen. She graduated with a BA in English Literature in 2014 and has been working hard ever since to put her degree to good use. Although it took her two years to finally finish her very first rough draft, she is thrilled to have recently released her debut The Blogger and the Hunk.

Matisse loves all things Jane Austen, will choose tea over coffee any day, is a Phantom of the Opera aficionado, and has been an avid book blogger since 2013. She currently lives in SoCal with her family and three fur babies: Max, Thumper, and Percy. 

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Blog Tour with Excerpt + Teasers: Such Dark Things by Courtney Evan Tate @Court_Writes @InkSlingerPR

Such Dark Things by Courtney Evan Tate

Publication date: March 20th, 2018

Synopsis (according to Goodreads):

A modern day Fatal Attraction meets The Girl on the Train, by New York Times and USA Today bestselling new adult author Courtney Cole, now writing dark psychological suspense under the name Courtney Tate Evans.

From the outside, Dr. Corinne Cabot is living the American dream: a successful ER physician, she is married to a hardworking and handsome psychologist. Together they own a charming house in the Chicago suburbs. But Cabot has a dark personal past and her memory has holes she tries to fill in. Her sleep is ravaged by recurring nightmares of that night when, as a teenager, she found her father standing next to the bodies of two people he had shot dead. It is what she can't remember about that night that utterly haunts her. Her father is still alive in jail for that terrible crime. At time now, despite her success, she fears she is truly unable to determine what is real and what is not. Then she starts to suspect that something is amiss with her husband and realizes that nothing--and no one--in her life is as it appears.

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Excerpt

My skin is sticky with blood.

My waistband is wet with it, and I can taste it on my lips. It's splattered on my face, and it tastes like metal that has been rotting in the sun and rain for a hundred years. The night makes me shiver, the cool breeze rustling my hair, and for a split second, I'm back there in that house, standing in that blood. My bare toes feel the warmth of the liquid turn cool as the minutes tick past.

Goose bumps raise on my neck, and a knot that I can't swallow is lodged in my throat. My feet are frozen frozen frozen on the ground, and I can't move.

Their eyes are open and lifeless, although they stare at me.

They see me.

Yet they see nothing.

I can't breathe.

My lips are ice, just like theirs.

My heart is pounding and racing and stuttering, and I can't breathe I can't breathe I can't breathe.

"Corinne. You're safe here. Corinne."

And just like that, I'm not there.

I'm here.

"There was blood all over me." My words are stilted and fragile, like glass.

I stare at my hand, and even though it's clean now, I see it as it was seventeen years ago, covered in the blood of two souls... souls that were living and that aren't anymore. It's hard to wrap my mind around. First they were breathing, and then they weren't. It happened in a split second. I inhale shakily.

"Think about that moment," the doctor instructs. "Who can you see?"

I think on that. "Melanie is next to me on the floor. Her head is bleeding into a pool. There is so much blood that it looks black." I close my eyes, because it had been the first time I'd seen blood like that, and it terrified me. "Joe is on the bed. His blood is splattered all over the wall. Both of them have their eyes open."

Staring at me.

The emotions welling up in me are like a wave, swelling, swelling, swelling... until I can't handle it anymore. The horror and the guilt and the pain are just too much.

"I can't do this," I blurt out. "I'm done for the day."

Dr. Phillips looks at me, and he's calm and detached.

"Corinne, why are you here?"

I pause. What a stupid question. "You know why I'm here."

I hate it when they treat me with such condescension.

"Humor me," he tells me. "Why are you here?"

I grit my teeth and look away.

He waits.

"You're saying that I tried to hurt myself. But I wouldn't do that."

I look at him now, and he's so fucking emotionless. I look down at my left wrist, at the bandage covering up the stitches.

"I wouldn't," I insist again. "I'm a fucking physician. I wouldn't have cut my wrist horizontally. If I really wanted to hurt myself, I would've known to cut vertically along the vein."

I finger the gauze. Beneath it, the cut throbs, evidence of something I don't remember doing.

"I'm not crazy," I add. And I don't know if I'm trying to convince Dr. Phillips, or myself.

"You're not crazy." He nods. "But you've experienced a mental break. You're here because you need to deal with the casual underlying issue so that it won't happen again. Right?"

He's a fucking asshole.

I stare at the wall. At the whiteness, at the sterility.

"You need some plants in here," I tell him, avoiding the question. "Greenery puts patients at ease. All this blankness... it's maddening."

"I'll keep that in mind," he says wryly. "Corinne..."

I interrupt. "Dr. Cabot," I tell him. "I've earned it."

"Dr. Cabot," he corrects himself. "You're right. You've earned it. You worked a long time to finish medical school and your residency. You're a top ER physician. You have a life envied by everyone around you. You've got to take care of yourself, so you can protect this life you've built."

I close my eyes. Behind my eyelids, it's dark and safe. It's black and warm.

"Protect it from what?" I whisper.

"You tell me," he answers. "You've got something inside of you that is triggered now, something that creates panic and a fight-or-flight response. We know what your father did so long ago. What we don't know is why... or what damage it has caused in you, damage that seems to be affecting you now."

"I don't know either," I say helplessly, my eyes opening to the white walls again. "I can't remember. I never could. You know that."

"I know." Dr. Phillips nods again, and he tries to be so fucking comforting. "You have a history of dissociative behavior. You blocked out what your father did so long ago, and it stands to reason that your brain has developed that as a defense mechanism. It's doing it again now. If we don't get to the bottom of why your memories are being triggered now, after all of these years... you'll never have peace. Do we agree on that?"

Reluctantly, I nod.

"So we have to start at the beginning. You have to stay here and focus."

Anger flares in me, red and hot, and I stare him down. He doesn't blink and neither do I.

"Focus?" I ask him, and my words are sharp and I wish they would cut him. "You think it's as simple as sitting down and focusing? How dare you sit there and tell me what to do, when you have no idea what it's like?"

I stand up to leave, but the psychiatrist's next sentence holds me in my place, freezing me.

"Corinne, you promised Jude you'd try."

Jude.

My beautiful, understanding Jude.

I swallow hard. I did promise. And I have to follow through, even though the pain it causes me is immeasurable. I owe it to him. I'll do it for him. Not for this psychiatrist, but for Jude.

My body folds back into the seat, and I finger and medical bracelet circling my right wrist. Corinne Elizabeth Cabot, Female. It's me, condensed into one stark sentence, yet I'm a stranger to myself right now. That's why I'm here. I don't know myself or my thoughts. My memories are foreign, blocked, nightmarish, out of control.

"Fine." There's nothing else I can say.

Dr. Phillips is quietly triumphant. "Let's begin again. Take a deep breath and close your eyes."

I do, drawing the cool air in a rush over my teeth, expanding my lungs and holding it, before I let it slowly exhale. I do it again, then again.

"Think back to that night, Dr. Cabot. Stand in that room. Tell me where your father is."

I envision it, I see it in my mind like it was yesterday. My father in his bloody steep-toed boots. "He's on the porch, waiting for the police to come."

"He left you alone in the house with two dead bodies?"

"Yes."

"He didn't try to run?"

"No."

"Okay. What did you do then?" my doctor asks me calmly, unfazed by the ugliness of my story.

"I was stunned. I think I was in shock. My hand was bleeding."

Dr. Phillips looks at my hand, because I'm stroking the scar now, an unconscious nervous tic that I often do when I'm anxious. "What happened to your hand?"

"I don't remember."

"Is there a lot that you don't remember from that night?"

"Yes. You know that."

"Yes, I do," he acknowledges. "So you're standing in the middle of a bloody crime scene because your father left you alone. What did you do then, Corinne?"

"I looked out of the window," I tell him. "I was frozen. I couldn't move. My feet felt like concrete and I was afraid if I moved, my heart would explode. So I took deep breaths. I watched the trick-or-treaters walking by. I looked at the blood on my shoe. I looked at the jack-o'-lanterns that were lit on porches, and the ghosts hanging int he trees. There was a full moon. There was light on my shoulders."

"Anything else?"

"I stared at the street sign on the corner. All Hallows Lane."

"That's ironic," the doctor points out needlessly.

"Yes."

"How long did you stand there?" His question is quiet.

"Until they came and took me away."

About the Author:

Courtney Evan Tate is the nom de plume for New York Times bestselling author, Courtney Cole. Courtney Evan Tate is her darker side... the side that explores shadowy places.

Courtney lives in Florida with her husband and kids. She has a passion for raising drug addiction awareness, the Marine Corp (her middle son is a Marine) and being introspective on the human condition.

To learn more about her, you can visit her website.

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